The heraldry Halbrand carries in Season 1 depicts a stylized kingfisher, a bird whose symbolism supports the view of Halbrand’s arc as Sauron’s sincere repentance. In Greek myth, the kingfisher is a symbol that promises peace while demanding transformation. The kingfisher is also a powerful image of diving down to plumb the depths of the soul, water being a ubiquitous symbol of the unconscious. In Tolkien’s time, the kingfisher was often used as a symbol of opposites reconciled. Halbrand must confront the depths of his inmost self, reconcile his dark past, and only through this difficult transformative work can he experience the peace he seeks. This duality foreshadows his moral inventory, internal struggle, and transformation in Season 1.
In the Greek myth of Ceyx and Alcyone, the pair loved each other so much they referred to one another as Zeus and Hera, inciting the wrath of Zeus, who struck the ship of Ceyx and cast him into the sea. Heartbroken, Alcyone threw herself into the sea after him. The magnitude of their love humbled the gods, who then took pity on them and turned them into beautiful birds—Halcyon birds, or Kingfishers—granting them a period of peace between storms to nest each year. The story gives rise to the saying halcyon days, referring to peaceful times. In contrast to the strife wrought by Morgoth, the kingfisher image echoes the peace to which Halbrand refers in Númenor—I have been searching for my peace for longer than you know. Interestingly, ROP exhibits more direct elements of the Greek myth: the Vala Ulmo strikes Halbrand’s ship (via The Worm), casting him into the sea, while Galadriel throws herself into the sea, abandoning the ship bound for Valinor. In the myth, Zeus strikes the ship with a bolt of lightning; in ROP, Halbrand and Galadriel’s raft is struck by lightning, casting Galadriel into the sea, and it is Halbrand who then throws himself into the depths to save her. Both emerge from the sea transformed by the bond they now share.
Kingfishers as symbols of reconciled opposites are prevalently employed by renowned literary contemporaries of Tolkien. In Season 2, as he is dying on Sauron’s spear, Celebrimbor says: “It must be nearly noontide. One used to hear the kingfishers, flying to the river. It is a pity how you have silenced them.” This line seems out of context in the moment, yet understanding the deep intentionality of the writing, we know it must be significant. His reference to kingfishers alludes to the talisman Sauron has long since lost—the path to redemption from which he has strayed and from which he himself is now lost.
Two prominent poems by contemporaries of Tolkien mention kingfishers. The Four Quartets, a series of verses by T.S. Eliot, explicitly mentions the silence of kingfishers in fourth part of the first poem:
IV Time and the bell have buried the day, The black cloud carries the sun away. Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray Clutch and cling? Chill Fingers of yew be curled Down on us? After the kingfisher’s wing Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still At the still point of the turning world.
This is only part of the poem, whose larger themes speak to, among other things, the pointlessness of dwelling on the past and the potential to connect with true consciousness, a spiritual state outside of time in which paradoxes are reconciled, opposites joined. This state is possible through introspection—Will the sunflower turn to us?—and letting go of the past to be fully in the present moment—the still point of the turning world.
It is in this still point of insight—the present—where we find the union of past and future, the reconciliation of opposites: movement and stillness, light and dark. The exchange between Galadriel and Halbrand in the woods of the Southlands echoes exactly this. In a moment of stillness, as the world around them turns, Galadriel tells Halbrand “Whatever it was he did to you, and whatever it was you did… Be free of it.” Do not dwell on the past; the present is all that matters. Halbrand replies “I never believed I could be… Until today.” In fighting with Galadriel, he reconciles the Darkness and Light within—experiencing the wholeness of being that enables him to transform his wounds into a purpose beyond himself. “Fighting at your side, I… I felt… If I could just hold on to that feeling, keep it with me always, bind it to my very being…” The feeling he describes is the healing wound: the sense of transformed wholeness that comes from confronting the depths of his inmost self and emerging to simultaneously accept his Darkness and still choose his Light, as Diarmid says, choosing good again and again.
While I can’t be sure the writers had this poem in mind, it offers interesting thematic parallels with Celebrimbor’s line. Time and the bell have buried the day—the elegaic tone echoes the inexorability of Sauron’s corruption. *The black cloud carries the sun away—*an explicit contrast of darkness and light; in ROP the spreading shadow threatening Middle-earth is upon them, as smoke from the siege literally blots out the sun over Eregion. Will the sunflower turn to us—the sun is hidden, but does light yet remain—in Nature, in Eru’s creation, or perhaps within us? Will the clematis / Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray / Clutch and cling?—Clematis symbolizes wisdom and clarity; in Darkness, can we yet connect with the divine beauty and wisdom of Nature, to see clearly? Chill / Fingers of yew be curled / Down on us?—The yew, poisonous and ubiquitous in graveyards, is known as the Death Tree. Contrasting with the light of the sunflower and clarity of the clematis, and considering the repetition of words implying descent—buried, stray down, curled down on—will we dive into our dark depths and confront the death requisite for rebirth? Will we confront our shadows as we contemplate our light? Will wisdom come to us in the depths we must face to know wholeness? After the kingfisher’s wing / Has answered light to light—as the kingfisher, Halbrand’s light is reflected in Galadriel’s light. At the still point, Galadriel says “Thank you… For pulling me back,” and Halbrand replies “Was you, pulled me back first.” His light answers her light, while their inner light (Secret Fire) answers the light of Eru (the Flame Imperishable). *After the kingfisher’s wing / Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still—*in the darkness and silence, light—hope—remains. This line thematically echoes Celebrimbor’s words to Galadriel, which she repeats as the last line of Season 2: …and the sun yet shines. Finally the last line—*At the still point of the turning world—*describes the transcendent moment of insight in which one realizes the wisdom (clematis) of both light (sunflower) and dark (yew), of contradictions reconciled and transformed into new understanding, perspective, and purpose.
In the midst of this strife, [opposing pulls of Darkness and Light, yew and sunflower] whereat the halls of Iluvatar shook and a tremor ran out into the silences yet unmoved, Iluvatar arose a third time, and his face was terrible to behold. Then he raised up both his hands, and in one chord, [wisdom in the union of opposites—Dark and Light] deeper than the Abyss, [transcending the dark depths, where the Kingfisher dives] higher than the Firmament, [transcending the light heavens, where the Kingfisher soars] piercing as the light of the eye of Ilúvatar, [piercing the veil between Darkness and Light, the illusion of duality, to reveal The One—divine union in the eye of Ilúvatar] *the Music ceased.
Then Iluvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, and that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me,* [has answered light to light] nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument [the light—of Ilúvatar—is still (persists)] in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. [at the still point of the turning world]
This is Halbrand’s journey to healing. In letting go of his past, confronting his Darkness, and yet wielding his power (Will) in service of others, he transforms dark pain into fair purpose, and with Galadriel in the forest, experiences the still point of the turning world. Per Ethel Cornwell’s analysis in her book The "Still Point": Theme and Variations in the Writings of T. S. Elliot, Coleridge, Yeats, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and D. H. Lawrence, the still point is “…self-surrender to and identification with the spiritual center of creation, the center of reality, where all opposites are reconciled….”
Tolkien knew of T.S. Eliot, and though it seems he may not have particularly liked the man, he was aware of his work.
After all it is possible to dislike Eliot with some intensity even if one has no aspirations to poetic laurels oneself. —Letter #216
Another poet, whom Tolkien esteemed, is G. M. Hopkins.
…I came across a passage dealing with the charming relations between G. M. Hopkins and his ‘pen-friend’ Canon Dixon. Two men starved of ‘recognition’. Poor Dixon whose History of the Church of England (and whose poems) received but a casual glance, and Hopkins unappreciated in his own order. —Letter #265
Hopkins wrote the poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire, in which the symbol of the kingfisher as a union of opposites may have influenced T.S. Eliot’s choice of the same symbol. Hopkins’ poem is relevant here not only for its connection through the kingfisher as a symbol for transformation and reconciliation of opposites (mortality and immortality), but also because the symbol on the crest found by Halbrand looks very much like flames—a kingfisher on fire. This image connects the themes of Halbrand’s arc, the themes of the poem, and even the etymology of Halbrand’s name.
The ‘kingfisher caught fire’ of Halbrand’s talisman
Halbrand caught in the fiery light of the sun, emerging in the zenith of his arc into Light
G.M. Hopkins poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire:
*As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices; Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men’s faces.*
The opening octet alludes to air (flight of kingfishers and dragonflies), fire (fire and flame), water (wells), and earth (stones)—fundamental elements of nature and creation—as well as music (each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s / Bow swung finds tongue to flight out broad its name), the basis of the creation myth in Tolkien’s Arda: the Music of the Ainur.
… and the Valar perceived that the World had been but foreshadowed and foresung [music], and they must achieve it….
And in this work the chief part was taken by Manwë [Air] and Aulë [Earth] and Ulmo [water]; but Melkor too was there from the first, and he meddled in all that was done, turning it if he might to his own desires and purposes; and he kindled great fires [fire]. —Ainulindalë
The images transition from natural (kingfishers, dragonflies) to manmade (wells, bells) to Man himself, tracing the presence of the divine in all things.
As the stories become less mythical, and more like stories and romances, Men are interwoven. … The contact of Men and Elves already foreshadows the history of the later Ages, and a recurrent theme is the idea that in Men (as they now are) there is a strand of ‘blood’ and inheritance, derived from the Elves… —J.R.R. Tolkien, 1951 Letter to Milton Waldman
Like the poem, The Silmarillion begins with the most divine, those ‘natural’ beings and creations closest to divine origin, and each cycle of the history traces events and beings further from this original, natural state: from Eru to the Ainur, from the Ainur to the Elves, and from the Elves to Men. Even as each cycle strays further from divine origin, each yet retains the “strand of ‘blood’ and inheritance” of the original divine.
Through the lens of ROP, we can see this as the Flame Imperishable of Eru in all things. Just as a bell “flings out broad its name,” each creation expresses its unique essence and purpose. The kingfisher symbolizes both mortality (each mortal thing does one thing and the same) and immortality (Christ and the Father)—its fiery iridescence transitory, yet its divine spark eternal. Just as the image of the still point describes a flash of insight, so does the kingfisher catching fire—a flash of brilliance unifying opposites, tragic in its transience and hopeful in its reflected and eternal divinity. Per Lynn E. Coehn “… in Hopkins’s sonnet, union with God and a unification of symbolic opposites – life and death; mortality and immortality are achieved through Christ…”
With Mortality, especially as it affects art and the creative (or as I should say, sub-creative) desire which seems to have no biological function, and to be apart from the satisfactions of plain ordinary biological life, with which, in our world it is indeed usually at strife. This desire is at once wedded to a passionate love of the real primary world, and hence filled with the sense of mortality, and yet unsatisfied by it. **—J.R.R. Tolkien, 1951 Letter to Milton Waldman